Liverpool Migrant Solidarity march on December 18, International Migrants Day

Join Liverpool Migrant Solidarity Network on International Migrants Day, marching in solidarity with refugees and migrants.

From 3:30pm, at Lime Street station steps.

The 18th December marks International Migrants Day, and on this day people in Liverpool will be coming together in a peaceful protest and march to show our solidarity with migrants.

We demand an end to reporting and detention, both of which are practices that humiliate and punish those who need our help most of all.

Liverpool will also be participating with other activist groups, such as End Deportations and Unis Resist Border Controls and others from all over the UK to stand in solidarity with the Stansted 15, a group of people who stopped a secret charter flight from deporting precarious migrants to destitution, persecution, and death. On Monday 10 December, the Stansted 15 were found guilty of terror-related charges. Amnesty International called the verdict a crushing blow for human rights. We are using this day to raise awareness of the plight of the Stansted 15 in addition to local migrant-rights issues in every city participating in this national day of action.

We believe that this draconian ruling was designed to thwart direct action against the UK government’s brutal and violent treatment of migrants. This country’s racist and xenophobic immigration policy is rooted in its colonial history. This history continues with the mistreatment and exploitation of migrants in detention, a regime of sexual and physical violence that has resulted in over 43 migrant deaths inside ten immigration removal centres since 2000. Even when not detained, borders cross the everyday lives of all migrants, especially asylum seekers who live in enforced poverty, forbidden to work and housed in appalling privately-run accommodation. State hostility is further embedded in schools, universities, the NHS, charities and housing authorities, with employees conscripted to become border guards, making precarious the lives of so many non-EU and EU migrants and those who were born in the UK but were unable to regularise their status because of opaque immigration rules and high visa fees. The violent coloniality of the hostile environment was exposed this year by the horrible treatment of the Windrush generation, many of whom were brought to the UK to help rebuild the national economy after World War II, raising children that were born in the UK. After living in the UK for their entire lifetimes, members of these communities have found themselves cruelly detained and deported, without the ability to contest their cases.

Helping migrants and stopping detention and deportations from happening in our communities is not a crime! We demand an end to the the hostile environment policy, an end to immigration detention centres and an end to deportations!

To support the Stansted 15 and End Deportations, we urge people to wear and/or make signs in pink in solidarity.

Bring banners, placards and your friends and family to join us on the day!

We are meeting at 3.30pm outside of Lime Street Station.

Bring banners, placards and your friends and family to join us on the day!